


Shantytown Welcome

by Charolastra



Category: Coco (2017)
Genre: Bittersweet Ending, Emotional Baggage, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Family Issues, Grumpy Old Men, Hurt/Comfort, Not great?, Sad Ending, Skeleton Puns, Skeletons
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-10
Updated: 2019-09-10
Packaged: 2020-10-14 05:24:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,542
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20595422
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Charolastra/pseuds/Charolastra
Summary: A bedraggled, recently deceased Héctor is found and 'taken in' by a strange and frankly grumpy old man, who introduces him to his new home.





	Shantytown Welcome

_"Por favor?"_

Héctor was close to begging the shopkeep. He needed clean, dry clothes, but the _vendedor_ shook his head, stern and merciless. "No _pesos_, no cleaning."

The rain outside was torrential. It hit the windows like fists, rattling, and wind howled judt behind it. If he stayed too long in the shop, the assistants would toss him back into it. Sympathy was as hard to find as work.

The tall skeleton's face fell. He tapped his weathered feet on the wood, anxious, and dislodged a spray of rainwater.

Héctor's tan charro suit--the very same he keeled over in--had endured nearly twenty years of constant use. _Chaqueta_ torn from rubbing against his ribs and sternum; Sleeves ripped or missing; The knees scratched out of his trousers. He'd spent the score a scavenger for everything, including friends. While other nomadic people had indeed befriended him, it was clear he would find no affinity here with the shopkeep. Héctor screwed his face into a grimace, opened his mouth to talk, but was interrupted by a gruff, deep voice.

"Give him a break, Marcos."

The shopkeep glared at something beyond Héctor. When he turned, his brightly colored eyes fell on a stout skeleton. He assumed he was talking to him, anyway.

"You know my rules, Chicharrón. No _pesos_, no--"

"--No cleaning. You never do no favors around here."

"Just as well, Chich," the shopkeep huffed.  
At least he had made the effort. Still achingly cold and alienated, he went to thank the older man. The door wobbled closed just before his face; All that was left behind him. Héctor dashed into the open air after him.

"_Señor Chicharrón!"_

Maybe the yell wasn't necessary. The thoroughfare was vacant, as parties and celebrations had scooped up the souls and dumped them into hotels, cul-de-sacs, and taverns. The little man with his cane was this raod's only traveller.

Héctor visibly trembled with the chill, but Chicharrón was somehow unperturbed when he swayed to meet him. "What?" 

"Thank you, _señor_."

"For what?"

"For--For what you did, back there. Or, eh, tried to do. _Muchas gracias_. Really."

Chicharrón only grunted in response. The hollows of Héctor's eyes were deep and lined almost painfully with exhaustion; with fear. Chicharrón paused to regard him, askance.

"You from Shantytown?" asked the skeleton at length. His strong chin moved fluidly when he spoke. For but a moment, Héctor could see the gaps in his teeth. The younger male shook his head.

Chicharrón snorted derisively. His eyes moved easy as waves up and down Héctor's gaunt frame. "You look like you should be."

Héctor blinked, unsure if he should be offended or flattered. Or both. "What--what does that mean?"

When Chich laughed, his voice was like a home hollowed by fire:painful, smokey, and dry; Bereft of any joy.

"It means you're like the rest of us."

* * *

Chicharrón was none too pleased to become a welcoming committee of one.

Héctor burst with joy when he learned of 'people like him,' like there was a whole clan of scruffy and unwashed young men wandering around without him. Soon he became too sprightly for the older man to handle and he agreed, begrudgingly, to take him to his "people."

Hobbling on the cane, he lead Héctor beneath the bleak arch, through the maze of connected piers and old docks, floating on the reflections of moonlight. Héctor sucked in a breath, oddly tainted with a forlorn feeling.

Chich looked over his shoulder, smiling wryly. "Not what you expected?"

Engraved in the arch were skeletons soaring upward with resplendent orange wings. Chich did not give it any attention. To the newcomer it occured to him that this arch represented nothing less than the departure of those dwelling in Shanty Town; Soaring up to who-knew-where to do who-knew-what. Almost like a rapture for sinners.

The drowning feeling in his heart answered where Héctor could not.

No. Far from what he expected.

They travelled under the arch. The world behind it seemed like a comparable utopia, even as the storm gently calmed to nothing but wind.

Did Chich really live here? Héctor wondered more with each step. Was _he_ really to live here?

Chich did not humor his silent anxieties, moving with the same practiced certainty; Héctor scrambled to catch up. The pier they walked on dipped beneath their weight and the water licked tentatively at their feet. Héctor recoiled from the puddles on rotted wood, all too aware that his aversion to muck would have him stick out even more.

Taking in the townspeople was another assault on the senses. Gleaming fires in old oil drums stretched in tendrils to the heavens above them; The skeletons surrounding them laughed in uproars that shook their shackled homes. Everything was made of what was not theirs, yet its sum embodied their oxymoronic existence wholly: Exuberance amid homes slowly dissolving into the pier.

Eyes seemed glued on him as Chicharrón ushered onward. Skeletons scrutinized them, his intact yet dirty _charro_ suit, the mop of raven hair atop his skull. A woman walked by them who took notable interest in his jacket.

Forgetting his manners, Héctor turned to watch her as she passed. Her gait was uneven and, beneath a long, besmirched skirt, he spotted a metal rod supporting her lowermost leg bone. If he could've blanched, he would have; shocked at the...the...

Everything.

Worse yet, his bones were whittling away. Just like Chich, he noted--or like everyone they saw here--the white became something like limestone against sand. Yellowed enough to set him apart from others. Héctor pulled his _chaqueta_ snug around himself.

Chicharrón finally ambled into a ramshackle bungalow. The entrance had no covering but a blanket waving in the breeze, and the skeleton disappeared behind it as he crossed the threshold. Héctor followed with some difidence. Then relief gripped him in the privacy of the little shack.

"You're going to need a change of clothes." Chich's slight wheeze mingled with his gravelly tone. No light was present in the bungalow, and in the dark, Héctor couldn't identify where his voice came from. Then, with a _swish_, Chicharrón pulled on a second curtain to reveal a huge open wall, where the moon touched almost every part of his bungalow. The parted curtains rippled gently, sending their own 'Hello' to Mother Moon.

"Do I really need new clothes? Mine are fine now..."

"_Sí_. The forgotten don't need fancy clothes just to get them dirty."

"But I'm not forgotten."

Chich halted. The baleful gaze he fixed on Héctor made him want to sink into the floor.

"No?" rasped Chich, his voice low.

Now would be the time to swallow the childlike trepidation. Now, Héctor knew, was the moment to stand for his wife and their love. Even if she had yet to put his picture up so he could see them. Even if she wasn't aware he had passed.

"No."

Hollow laughter. Sorrow etched into every deep skull marking. "Sure looks like you haven't been on no ofrenda in a while."

"She wouldn't forget me."

"They all will."

"...No."

"You're being forgotten. There's no shame in dressing like it."

Héctor sniffed with a non-existent nose. Chich heard before it could be masked with a cough; Sneered. "Don't you start crying, _chamaco_. You'll be fine."

"Okay."

At last the old man deposited a jacket, trousers, and raggedy suspenders at Héctor's feet. They weren't in horrible shape. At least they were intact.

A wave of shame and sadness akin to molten rock crashed over him. If he could turn red, he would look not unlike a tomato. How ungrateful he was when this was likely all he deserved.

Shame for crying. Most men believed it was so unmanly, you might as well be a woman if you did! Bitterly, he reminded himself he did _not_ think like those men. The thought punched holes in his self-hate.

Héctor sat down. His bones rattled on the wood. Head bowed, he shucked off the suit, replaced it with the clothes he'd been given. Chicharrón stood facing his back, looking over the waters of Shanty Town.

For a long, long moment, the tears pricking his eyes wobbled on the precipice of his hollow sockets. He dipped his head lower to hide from the older man, wiggled the suspenders over his shoulders. A steady _drip, drip, drip_ filled the pregnant silence.

The older swelled with sympathy. The same long-suffering misery filled the vacancies in his bones, mind, eyes. He wondered if he'd been harsh on the nameless boy.

It wasn't quite fair to treat him the way he treated his own self; Senseless beating down and tearing up of his spirit. No, he didn't deserve such. He would have enough to deal with on his own.

The hollows of Chich's eyes tipped inward; Sympathetic, sad. Héctor cried in silence, and when Chich put a hand on his shoulder, squeezed, Héctor leaned into the touch. The only source of comfort the 20-something had received in his strife-stippled year of residence.

"You sleep here tonight."

It came out like an order more than a request. Mildly, Héctor scoffed, palming at his eyes in the now shattered silence. "Okay."

"_Como té llama?"_

_"_Héctor."

"Well, welcome to Shantytown, Héctor."


End file.
